


Salt Skin

by echoist



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Backstory, Headcanon, Jaegercon Bingo, M/M, Matchmaker!Mako, Post-Canon, Schmoop, Science Assholes, Tumblr: jaegercon, square fill: ocean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:12:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Newt had dreamt about vast, unmapped stretches of the ocean floor for as long as he could remember, dwarfed by hydrothermal vents spewing clouds of scalding black smoke, or pushing his way through never-ending forests of giant kelp. Always moving, pushing through, searching for something indefinable he knew awaited him on the other side, perpetually out of reach.'</p>
<p>Written for Tumblr's Jaegercon Bingo. The prompt square was 'ocean.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt Skin

 

Newton woke up confused and a little disappointed to still be in his bunk, pushed against the wall in his miniscule quarters five stories below sea level. He wasn't sure how long he'd been lost to the gentle sway of the ocean in his dreams, floating, light as a child's toy in a tiny bathtub sea, but a lingering sense of peace and contentment lingered in its wake. He'd dreamt about vast, unmapped stretches of the ocean floor for as long as he could remember, dwarfed by hydrothermal vents spewing clouds of scalding black smoke, or pushing his way through never-ending forests of giant kelp. Always moving, pushing through, searching for something indefinable he knew awaited him on the other side, perpetually out of reach.

Trespasser's explosion from the depths twelve years ago had altered the landscape of his dreams even as it crushed the earth beneath its staggering bulk, and Newt had assumed the change was permanent.

When he did sleep, which admittedly wasn't very often, Newt stumbled through a vast warren of undersea caves, gasping for air and finding hopeless dead ends instead of the passage through. Sometimes he walked for days through a thick, smothering darkness only to reach the edge of a cliff and discover how much farther down there was to fall. Glowing, bulbous eyes the size of houses watched him from the fissures, lying in wait for the chance to make their move. When they inevitably seized their chance, Newt woke up sweating and terrified, frantically checking to make sure he still had all his limbs. It was horrific and yet strangely exhilarating, coming face to face with his greatest fascination and his worst fear. Every morning, he woke up thankful to still be alive.

This morning was no exception, though it wasn't an emergence from confusing and conflicted dreams that spawned his gratitude. Newt let his eyes drift shut again, his breathing soft and even, the way he almost never managed while fully awake. He tried to recapture the dream; the vast ocean beneath him instead of crushing him from above, his tiny body drifting back and forth with each gentle wave. In Newt's mind, great and powerful shadows swam below him, but he was too small, too insignificant for them to take notice. They weren't monsters, though monsters did exist. Just not here, not now, not anymore. The gentle giants of the deep soothed him with their very presence, persisting in the wake of an apocalypse averted. Just like him. After last night, they were all survivors.

He wiped a layer of cold perspiration from his face, running his fingers through the floppy mass of hair plastered to his forehead. Newt didn't remember when he'd first started referring to the lower levels of the Shatterdome as the dungeons, at first with an air of gloomy resignation, but later almost affectionately so. It had been a joke, born out of complaints from the Marshal and anyone else who had to make the descent into the grimy, slightly damp halls where the K-Science division lived and worked. Still, it was an apt descriptor, dark and medieval, and it had caught on quickly among the staff. Newt had gotten used to the chill and the salty sheen of sweat that clung to him, morning and night. He'd never been great at telling time, even before, and he hardly thought it mattered whether the sun was up or down once they'd realized the world was ending. They'd run out of money, out of ideas, and eventually just out of time.

Unbelievably, that way of life had shifted into the past tense, now they'd succeeded. This was a new era, a calm between storms, and he knew it honestly didn't matter if he got out of bed today at all. Hell, no matter the time, Newt felt fairly certain at least half of the base was still drunk. He'd left them to it after the crush of bodies had become too much, the sound too loud and pounding inside his skull. He could feel the bass echoing deep in his chest for three full levels down, until he'd finally reached the stillness of the catacombs below. His world, buried deep beneath the constant flurry of concerns from higher elevations and superior pay grades. His own private castle in reverse, where every day he tried harder than the night before to save the world.

Newt wished he could leave that world to its own devices for a few more hours, wanting the gentle push and pull of the ocean back around him like a blanket. Instead, after tossing and turning for perhaps half an hour, he gave in and threw his legs over the side of the bed, stumbling into the shower with eyes still half shut. He stood beneath the rush of water until it ran too cold for comfort, and then a while longer, eventually stepping out and accepting the presence of air against his skin. Digging around through various piles of books, loose papers and action figures, Newt finally found two t-shirts that weren't that wrinkled and layered them for warmth. Grabbing a pair of jeans off the back of his desk chair and reaching for his jacket, he headed for the elevator instead of the torture chamber he shared with Hermann.

The one thing Newt never quite acclimated to in Hong Kong's sub-basement living space was the lack of an outside view. It made the confined spaces, further divided by Hermann's incessant need for order and organization feel a bit claustrophobic at the best of times. He knew if there were windows in the dungeon, this far below ground on the edge of the island, they'd look out into shifting, lightless depths, currents lapping gently against the glass. Newt had wondered, occasionally aloud, why the designers hadn't built them in, and been met with Hermann's cold, familiar scorn. Of course there would be concerns about pressure and stability. Of course it would have been nearly impossible to engineer and unforgivably reduce the defense capabilities of a structure that was intended to outlast a direct assault. That was no reason, in Newt's mind, not to try. He'd always wanted to live in an aquarium.

He imagined looking up from his work to see a swarm of jellyfish, trailing bioluminescent ribbons of tentacles through the water as they drifted lazily past. He knew Hermann would hate it, seeing only a waste of perfectly good storage space. He'd probably have aligned his blackboards in front of them just to spite Newton by blocking his view. The thought of watching manta rays glide up to the glass in curiosity, or the sound of a curious finless porpoise pressing its nose against the glass birthed a sphere of nostalgic warmth deep inside his chest.

After his parents had split, he'd moved from Berlin to Chicago with his mother, and she'd taken him to the Shedd Aquarium as often as they could afford. He loved the old sections of the menagerie the best, cool and dim, lit only by the blue-green glow issuing out from the gigantic tanks. He'd stared up at the skeletal leviathans suspended from the ceiling and felt a strange kinship with the immense, unfathomable creatures of the deep. He'd once spent so long admiring the bronze cast _architeuthis_ that his mother had to drag him away just before closing time. Once he'd discovered the bizarre creatures that dwelled in the deepest pits of the ocean, strange and grotesquely beautiful, his path in life had been set and he'd never looked back.

The elevator dinged as it reached the main level, doors sliding open onto a silent and empty hallway. Newt stepped out onto the observation deck just beyond the empty garage, watching the sun slowly creep toward the darkened horizon, making room for itself in the midst of the void. Far to the east, it blurred the lines between sky and sea in a hazy stretch of gradient hues. Newt briefly wished it were still full dark, so he wouldn't know where one stopped and the other emerged. It would be like his dream, dense and umbral, one more peculiar comfort that shouldn't make so much _sense._

He was still a scientist, even at the end of the world, the boundaries of his chosen profession writ deep under his skin long before he'd inked his first defiant lines across the surface. Other chemists and biologists seemed to prefer living in a world where experiments yielded reproducible results instead of fascinating, unexplainable reactions that could turn the world on its head. New discoveries that changed entire paradigms were quickly reduced to summations at the top of a journal page, ordinary and accepted, archived before the ink could even dry. Newt, meanwhile, could never understand why each new species identified didn't make the front page of the New York Times. Then again, he also didn't understand why any species that didn't represent a recent evolutionary divergence should be called 'new,' either. They'd always been there, humankind just hadn't gotten around to invading and thoroughly fucking up their territory yet.

Newt frequently suspected that he'd just been working with the wrong people before that day in August when everything changed. After K-Day, the kaiju weren't just on the front page, they were on _every_ page. It shouldn't have surprised anyone, he thought, clambering ungracefully to the top of the curving sea wall that formed the outer boundary of the Shatterdome. Failed musician or outlaw scholar, Newt's life had never truly made sense until he saw those first broadcasts from his table at the campus greasy spoon. When he saw that titan rise from the waves, something finally clicked with the weight of an old-fashioned skeleton key. Newt suddenly knew with heart-stopping certainty just what it was he was always meant to do.

The kaiju were entirely novel, like nothing he'd ever seen outside of his favorite films. They were _real_ , they were immense, and they were wreaking havoc on an unprecedented scale. After Trespasser, even his coworkers with the biggest sticks up their asses had to admit that everything they knew just might be wrong after all. Silicon based life forms breaching the surface of the ocean – the very idea had set Newt's brain on fire. Creatures emerging from an entirely different dimension, throwing every law, every long coddled theorem and neatly organized cladistic structure right into the circular file.

Still, no one wanted to study, to dissect, to figure out how the kaiju worked and why they were here. He'd watched the greatest minds in his field reduced to fear and loathing, hiding behind the observation principle and maintaining as great a distance from the epicenter of danger as they could manage. Why _not_ shout about it, he'd asked them, receiving only blank looks of terror and stares of disgust in return. Why not debate the hows and whys until pigs soared or the cows charged off into the sunset instead of coming home? Newt couldn't understand why anyone with scientist's innate curiosity would be able to stay away.

Life was never static; even at its deepest levels, there was always something waiting to shock and amaze and the thought that even _this_ should be boxed in, defined by equations bearing out only safe, predicted outcomes had made Newton want to scream (usually at Hermann). He couldn't live his life behind a podium when the real excitement lay in exploring the outliers. Newt's stubborn insistence upon straddling lines, on gravitating toward the liminal had made him something of a pariah in the world before, but he wouldn't trade it. He'd always choose living between the margins, where nothing ended and something was always beginning, over the safe, the definable, the absolute.

It was high tide in Victoria Bay as Newt let his mind take a rambling path through his recent past. His boots dangled far above the water line as he watched the waves, fingers splayed out across the rough steel and concrete platform. He wasn't supposed to be up here, of course, but posting a 'No Trespassing' sign had always been like sitting Newt down in an empty room with a giant red button. Sooner or later, he was going to push the damn thing, if only to find out what would happen. He watched the water slam into the sides of the building, kicking up a violent spray. It was windy and cold, but he figured it would eventually even out into a beautiful morning.

Newton always preferred a storm.

He considered jumping down, plummeting the six meters or so into the dark, swirling mass. It would be pointless, of course, and freezing, but he entertained the notion for a moment all the same. It didn't feel any different than vaulting the safety rail on the edge of a skyscraper and staring down at the city below, wondering what it might be like to just fall. Newt never understood why people got so worked up when he did that sort of thing; it wasn't like he was actually going to jump. He just wanted a better view.

Newt stared far out to sea, watching the water shimmer in the first rays of dawn. It spread out like a blanket, golden and promising, no threat from below to seek out and destroy. He remembered when people had been afraid of sharks, and almost laughed. It probably wasn't safe to go back in the water, and never would be, but at least the world had less to fear in the meantime.

He'd been a part of that, Newt thought, the spark of pride still glowing in his chest like an ember. It almost made him want to spend a day at the beach, except he knew he'd only wind up six shades of red if not hospitalized for sun poisoning. Again. He closed his eyes and tried to summon up the last remnants of his dream, and felt instead a quiet sigh from the back of his mind, and the sense of turning over on a soft mattress. He wondered if that meant Hermann was still asleep, then wondered how long this vague, undefined neural connection was supposed to last. It had already dimmed, but a tiny, hidden tether seemed determined to hold out as long as possible, no matter how inconvenient it made things in the meantime.

Newt was still waiting for the fallout. They'd barely spent a centimeter apart after their utterly insane and potentially lethal drift with the infant kaiju brain, embracing in the control room like giddy teenagers when their hard won data proved the key to solving the eleventh hour riddle. Newt still couldn't really believe it had happened at all – that Hermann Gottlieb, of all people, had been willing to take that chance for him. Ok, so for the whole goddamned world, but still – even in the sobering light of morning, it still felt a whole lot more like Hermann had leapt willingly into the fray _with him_ than any other way Newt could possibly phrase it.

At Mission Control, he'd held on like he couldn't bear to let go. In front of everyone that was left, Hermann had gripped his hand and held it tight.

They hadn't talked about it, hadn't needed to, their brains still coiled around one another like sleeping dogs. It felt right to linger in each other's space, to breathe the same air, to finish the sentence the other had started. When Tendo had glanced up curiously, Newt had just shrugged, as if to say _How the fuck should I know, man? No one's ever been stupid enough to do this before._ Then Mako and Raleigh had landed on the helipad and jumped out of the black Sikorsky like the heroes they were, and the Shatterdome had collectively lost its shit.

Far better to drink and dance and play it loud than to mourn, better to party now because when the music died and they had to face the silence again, it was going to be unbearable. Everyone knew it, felt it like a palpable wave always just about to crest, and fought it back, time and time again. They'd watched from behind the glass for a little while, even Herc and Tendo gone, though in opposite directions, and hadn't spoken a single word. Newt hadn't moved his arm from where he'd flung it proudly around Hermann's shoulders in camaraderie, in victory, but in that muted stillness, it had become something very different.

They'd been pushed back and forth by the throng of technicians and programmers bolting from their seats, cheering in more languages than Newton could count, and he'd helped Hermann steady himself against the glass. They'd faced each other for a long moment, time stretching out as the skin at the back of Hermann's neck grew warm and flushed beneath Newton's forearm. He leaned back against the glass and slowly, carefully let his hands drift down to settle across Newt's hips. It should have been a surprise, but nothing was anymore, not between them. Hermann knew what was in Newt's head, what had been there for years, shoved in a box that just kept opening no matter how many times he taped it shut.

He hadn't tried to hide it in the Drift, figuring the fate of the world was more important than the rush Newton got from their arguments, the way they'd start out on opposite sides of the room and end up standing toe to toe, shouting at top volume until the electricity jumping across their skin was nearly visible. How impossible it was to step back instead of kissing him, how wrong it felt to walk away or just go back to work. The way Hermann looked when he fell asleep at his desk, lines from the keyboard pressed across his cheeks and his hair a disorganized, chalk-ridden mess. How it had felt to come back to earth and fall apart in Hermann's arms after seeing the world on the other side of the Breach - begging him not to leave, shaking and utterly terrified of what he'd done. He was a real rock star all right, and he'd just overdosed on his favorite drug.

Over the years, Newt had built an impressive facade of swaggering intellectual superiority, a bulwark of pride and sharp retorts that had yet to fail him. The godawful truth was that he'd always wanted Hermann to be the exception, brash and brilliant and so used to telling the world to fuck off that it was second nature to break everything he touched. The only one that stuck around long enough to see Newton's cracks up close and have the temerity to _push_.

Newt had shoved his way through each door ever slammed in his face, but this – this one thing was different. Hermann was different, and Newt was too afraid that if he forced the lock, it would jam shut, and he'd never get to see what was on the other side. In the end, Newton didn't need to force anything. It turned out he'd had the key all along.

Newt took a step closer, his tongue darting out over his lower lip, giving Hermann time to object or just shove him away, but he did neither. Instead, Hermann's thumb swept across a patch of skin where Newt's shirt had ridden up over his jeans and that – oh, that was the last drop of his resolve, straight down the drain. He pushed forward, leaning his head gently against Hermann's, Newt's arm still wrapped tight across his shoulders where it belonged. That was the word that fired across his neurons and snapped somewhere deep inside his mind. He _belonged._

Newt reached out to cup Hermann's face in his left hand, and a shudder ran through Hermann's body at the contact. He didn't know if he said Hermann's name aloud or let it echo in his mind, but suddenly he was pushing Newt back, shrugging his arm from around his shoulders and stumbling forward, eyes searching for his cane. Newt retrieved it from the back of Tendo's chair and handed it to him dumbly, letting the hurt and disbelief show on his face despite his better judgment. He knew Hermann would probably feel it anyway, even if he tried to hide.

Hermann steadied himself and walked toward the door without a word, turning around once with a regretful smile that looked more like a rictus. He shook his head slowly, closing his eyes before turning back and leaving Newt standing there alone. A flood of bitterness rose in his throat like a choking bile, and Newt waited a few more moments before marching down the steps to the celebration. The noise struck him in the face like a slap, but he wound his way through the crowd, downing every glass he was offered no matter how awful the contents.

He found Raleigh and Mako and heartily embraced them both, feeling nothing but warmth and gratitude from them in return. It didn't escape Newt's notice that they were never more than a foot away from another the entire day, shoulders and hands brushing close for reassurance. They barely spoke; they didn't have to. That was what the Drift was like, that was what it _did_. And if Hermann refused to acknowledge that, if he'd looked into the deepest parts of Newt's mind and saw what was waiting there and didn't –

If he didn't -

Well, they'd all be going their separate ways soon enough and it wouldn't matter anymore. He told himself that, repeating it like a mantra in the vain hope that successive iterations would make it true. The ocean churned and swirled beneath Newton, beyond him, refusing to be still. Newt closed his eyes and smelled the salt on the air, felt the wind at his back and the first rays of the sun on his skin. He'd seen so much last night, probably too much, more than Hermann had wanted him to see. Maybe that was why. Maybe it didn't really go both ways, after all. Maybe they weren't actually as Drift compatible as he'd thought.

Except that was bullshit, Newt thought, staring down at the sea that pushed and heaved and never stopped trying to erode the wall that kept the Shatterdome from sinking. It was bullshit because he'd never been able to work with anyone before, not the way he worked with Hermann. Everyone else probably thought they hated each other, hell, before the Drift, Newt had been pretty certain that Hermann hated him, too, but now he knew differently.

Herman had walked away from him because he thought Newt deserved better, and that knowledge had been sitting in his gut like a stone for nearly twenty-four hours. He looked down at the water and wondered if it would weight him down enough to sink. He thought about pushing off the great concrete barrier and just letting go, letting the ocean push him against the rocks again and again until he wouldn't have to think anymore. Except it wouldn't work; Newt knew he'd just end up cold and miserable, flailing limbs like bonafide shark bait until he found his way back up the slope, shivering and embarrassed.

But goddammit, he'd let Hermann see _everything_ and after all they'd shared, all they'd risked, he still had the nerve to just walk right out that door.

Footsteps on the concrete pulled Newton out of his doom loop of self-loathing, and he knew it was Mako without turning around. No one else in the Shatterdome walked the way she did, soft-footed, with such careless confidence. She'd always been brave, without the need for bravado. It didn't even surprise Newt when she effortlessly vaulted up onto the wall it took him a good fifteen minutes to scale, and with far less grace.

'Utsukushii desu ne?' she said softly, meaning the view, and Newton nodded in agreement, having picked up a little Japanese here and there. It helped that Mako didn't bother to use the formal tense with him, made her phrases shorter and easier to puzzle out. 'You're awake early,' she added, glancing away from the water to study his face.

'Yeah, well,' Newt answered. 'I sort of passed out for most of the afternoon after you guys got back. I think I missed out on the party.'

Mako eyed him curiously. 'I did not see Hermann yesterday at all,' she said, a question underlying her words that she was too polite to ask.

'I dunno,' Newt mumbled. 'He was probably packing up the lab or something.' He shrugged, staring out into the distance.

Mako let a moment of silence pass between them, and Newton knew that when she looked out into the waves, she saw only a graveyard. Perhaps they both had come here seeking peace, only to find it sorely lacking.

'I'm sorry,' Newt said awkwardly, scratching at his arm. 'About Stacker, I mean. He was – he was always the best leader any of us could have asked for. The bravest damn guy I ever knew, and no one can ever take his place. I know – I mean, for you, it must be -' Newt cut himself off before his idiocy could translate any further into pain.

'I understand,' she answered, her eyes far away. 'Thank you.'

He moved to leave, to give her time to grieve alone, but she placed a gentle hand on his arm. 'Without you and Hermann, we could not have succeeded. What you did was very dangerous, and I have not properly thanked you for that.'

Newt gave her a half smile. 'No need to thank me,' he assured her. 'I didn't really think of it as a choice, you know? We just needed more information, so I figured out how to get it.' She didn't need to know about Hannibal Chau and his stupid posse of gangster flunkies, or his pet gold-plated balisong. His nose still hurt, for the record. 'Besides, I'm not the one who actually rode a Category Five kaiju like some kind of roller coaster straight down into the Breach.'

Make paused before speaking again, staring out across the shifting depths. Newt wondered if she was thinking about Gipsy or Striker, or the alien world she'd glimpsed before rocketing back to the surface. As it turned out, her mind was occupied with another subject. 'The machine you made, to interface with the kaiju brain – it functioned very much like the Drift, did it not?'

'It _was_ a Drift,' Newt answered. 'Just with a freaking alien hive-mind instead of the Jaeger AI.' He shuddered, remembering the world he'd seen and the creatures that occupied it. He didn't know if it had lasted ten seconds or ten minutes, but he knew for certain what he'd witnessed last night. There was no other way to call it, because there simply wasn't anythingelse in the entire scope of human experience quite like the Drift.

'I suppose,' Mako followed up carefully, words fluttering from her mouth like butterfly wings. 'That's why I was surprised not to see Hermann with you yesterday. Or now.'

Newton looked away, exasperated. 'I guess he finally found the proof to his theory that I'm not actually very interesting,' he muttered.

'I'm certain that's not true,' Mako assured him, staring back at him fiercely. Newt suddenly remembered her as a teenager, pushing her way through the Jaeger Academy by sheer force of will and a powerful, burning resentment. How she'd seemed to be on fire every time he saw her, desperate to learn all that she could as quickly as possible; anything to earn her place in a pilot's harness. She'd finally made it, and proven herself a hero every bit as great as her father.

She turned that same intensity on him now, and it nearly made him take a step back, right off the edge of the wall. Newt made a mental note to never forget that Mako Mori was a force of nature in her own right. He added a second note below the first to never, _ever_ , piss her off.

Newt felt a sudden shift in his mind, a disorientation so profound it made him sit back down on the concrete hard enough to bruise. A familiar scraping tread echoed down the hallway leading to the observation desk and Mako stood, placing a comforting hand on Newt's shoulder before sliding down the wall and heading east as if she meant to walk its entire length, staring straight into the early morning sun. Perhaps she did. It didn't matter; Newt was still trying to figure out if the sea was up or down.

The world slowly righted itself and he refused to turn around, even though he knew Hermann was framed in the doorway, shaded from the light. He struggled on the threshold, trying to decide whether or not to leave the safety of the walls. Newton felt his indecision and tried his damnedest not to care. He stared out over the water and thought about how far out he could make it if he tried to swim past the boundaries of the Bay. It was a stupid, half-formed thought, but Hermann reacted anyway, stepping out into the morning air.

Newt knew he should jump down, as Hermann certainly couldn't climb up to where he sat, but he decided if anyone had a right to be a dick this morning, it was him. He stared fixedly off into the distance, his stomach churning, wishing he were still asleep in that comforting, make-believe ocean of safety and silence.

Hermann's footsteps sounded on the concrete, but they headed away from him, and for a single, bitter instant, Newt was glad. What he didn't expect was to hear the grinding scrape of metal and turn to see Hermann hoisting a salt-slick ladder up to a numbered, tower-like fortification in the wall several feet away. The domed top held a bright halogen beam, which when lit, helped the Jaeger pilots navigate their way back to the appropriate garage after defensive maneuvers. It would also give Hermann something sturdy to lean against, if he managed to make it up the wall, which he clearly intended to do.

_This is so stupid_ , Newton thought, standing up and walking the length of the concrete barrier to steady the ladder. Hermann glanced up at him and gave him a brief nod, making it up most of the steps before holding out his cane. Newt took it and hooked it over the edge, reaching down to offer Hermann a hand up. He felt stabs of phantom pain that started in his hip and radiated out in all directions, pulling on not-actually-shortened muscles in his left leg and up his side. Hermann was either too used to the pain to bother reacting, or was just too stubborn to let it show. Newt would have bet money on the latter.

'You didn't have to come all the way out here,' Newton griped, suddenly fiercely angry at Hermann for risking the climb. He sat down, his feet once more dangling over the edge and watched the water batter fruitlessly against the stone. He held out his hand toward Hermann without looking, and felt a faint twinge of gratefulness fumble its way through his skull when the man took it and carefully sat down, leaning against the tower.

'Apparently, I did,' Hermann replied. 'You weren't in your room, or the laboratory, and I –' he paused, chewing his bottom lip. 'I remembered how you used to sit out here when we were first stationed in Hong Kong. Always watching the edge of the Bay, as if you were just _waiting_ for something to come out of the sea.'

'I was,' Newt replied, gazing off into the distance and thinking of how very far down the ocean floor dropped into the South China sea.

'Nothing's going to come out of it today,' Hermann reminded him, and Newton turned his head, momentarily silencing him with a glare.

'I'm very well aware of that, Hermann. Thanks so much for the completely unnecessary reminder.' Newton kicked at the wall with his boots and felt about eight years old. Hermann had walked all the way out here and then climbed a ladder – a _wet, rusty ladder_ just for the chance to speak to him, and Newt insisted on throwing a tantrum. He closed his eyes and gripped the concrete ledge with his hands until the ragged edges bit into his palms and a long, slow breath escaped his lungs.

'Stop that,' Hermann said, lifting Newt's right hand off the wall and brushing away the tiny pebbles stuck to his bleeding skin. Newt slumped down at the contact, unconsciously curling his fingers around Hermann's hand. Being this angry was exhausting, and it suddenly felt utterly pointless.

'Why,' he asked sullenly, the taste of acid on his tongue. 'Does it hurt?' He glanced up to see Hermann eyeing him as if he were the class dunce, and Newt ducked his head in a sudden rush of shame. 'Sorry,' he muttered. 'That was asinine.'

'No more than usual,' Hermann replied, but the casual sting was absent from his tone. 'The view from here really is quite spectacular,' he added, as if this were any ordinary conversation.

'Glad you finally got the balls to come up here and see it?' Newt asked, looking up with a smirk.

'I had my reasons,' Herman replied a bit stiffly.

'Yeah, well, are you going to tell me what those are any time soon?' Newt questioned. 'Cause I'm kind of cold, actually, and I was thinking about going back inside.'

'Fine,' Hermann answered, waving a hand dismissively in his direction. 'I've got a plane to catch for Heathrow, anyway.'

Newt looked up at him sharply, eyes set with a sort of stunned anger. A strangled breath choked in his throat behind a mass of jumbled words all scrambling for supremacy. 'You what?' he finally asked, sounding as if he'd just been punched in the gut.

'So predictable,' Hermann groused, looking straight through Newton as if he were just another salt breeze scouring the wall. 'Come over here,' Hermann directed with a sigh, and after a moment's debate with his dignity, Newt scuttled across the concrete until they sat side by side, their thighs just barely touching. Herman hesitantly wrapped his left arm around Newton's back, one hand coming to rest at his waist. Newt leaned into him, just a bit, worried about throwing one or the both of them off balance.

'I owe you an apology,' Hermann said, the words barely audible over the crashing of water below. 'We'd been through so much in such a short period of time, and I knew you'd seen – well, you'd probably seen everything. I couldn't understand why you'd still want to be anywhere near me after that, and yet I couldn't seem to shake you.'

Newton gaped at him foolishly before regaining enough sense to close his mouth. 'Are you kidding me?' he asked. 'I saw _you_ in there, Hermann. I saw -' He broke off for a moment, the borrowed memories rising up to fill his mind again. A young boy, relentlessly teased, hiding in the janitor's closet. Skipping class to avoid a stream of constant taunts and spitballs while still acing every test, only serving to infuriate his tormentors. A boy who hid from a world that didn't understand him, the two of them not so different, except that while Hermann shied away, Newton was constantly suspended and eventually expelled from three different schools for fighting back.

Hermann built model planes and rockets, launching them with perfect trajectories to crash through the school bullies' windows and then vanished according to a carefully engineered plan to escape punishment. Newton failed half his tests because he couldn't concentrate and his entry for the Science Fair ate right through the gymnasium floor. Hermann read books under a large shade tree with a quiet, mousy girl while Newton discovered that playing in a shitty punk band didn't automatically score him a date with anyone.

He saw himself through Hermann's eyes when he first joined the Jaeger program, felt him write Newt off as a vain, borderline crazy maniac who should never be allowed around sharp instruments. Felt that opinion change for the worse when they were forced to share space, and then slowly, after hurricanes of shouted words and vicious insults in German and English and sometimes a mix of both – slowly change yet again into something less easily defined between the daily push and pull.

He saw Hermann watching him when Newt didn't think he was looking, recalled with the vivid clarity of an eidetic memory the first time Newt had shrugged out of an entrail-stained Oxford in the overheated lab and worked in a sleeveless undershirt. Felt the jolt that had run through Hermann's entire body at the sight of him, felt his breath catch and his stomach fall with a sickening crash. Newt saw how difficult it was for Hermann to concentrate when he was too close, saw him dividing their most recent lab space down the middle so he could focus on the stable simplicity of numbers instead of the hot mess usually at his shoulder with unkempt hair and stupid skinny ties. The only one he could stand to be around, the infuriatingly brilliant madman whose reckless drive for discovery was bound to get him killed one of these days - just when Hermann was finally beginning to depend on him.

It was all too real and too close and Newton didn't know where to begin. 'I saw a girl,' he said, somewhat stupidly. 'You were reading to her, under this huge weeping willow. It seemed – it seemed really nice, like a good memory.' He dug through the gallery of images and sounds piled like a layer of silt, searching for her name. 'Veronica? Vera?'

'Vanessa,' Hermann answered with a wry smile. 'She was my closest friend in school. My only friend, really. Once we started University, we made a ridiculous promise to one another.'

'Oh really?' Newt asked, half his brain brutishly jealous and the other too curious not to ask.

'We vowed that if neither of us had married by 35 – it seemed so distant, practically elderly – that we would marry each other.' Herman huffed out an amused breath, remembering the formal handshake that sealed the deal.

'Did you – I mean, were the two of you -' Newton really didn't want to know, but he had to ask.

'No,' Hermann answered. 'I think we just didn't want to end up old and alone.' He smiled, watching a flock of seabirds whirl and spin above the water line. 'I was her best man when she married a kind and obscenely devoted surgeon at age 31. She asked me - ' he stopped suddenly, glancing away.

'What?' Newton asked, peering around for a glance at Hermann's face. It had gone slightly red, and he avoided Newt's gaze.

'She asked me if I'd found anyone yet,' he replied softly, the wind rising up so that Newt could barely hear his words. 'I told her that I had, but he didn't – he couldn't possibly -' Hermann leaned heavily against the concrete pillar, and Newton reached out without thinking to brush his wind-ruffled hair back in place.

Hermann leaned into the soft graze of Newt's fingers before taking a deep breath. 'That was five years ago, and only yesterday I found out that he _did_.' Hermann's grip on his waist tightened fractionally as Newt stared, hard and unblinking, but Hermann wasn't finished. 'I didn't – there wasn't time to even process what I thought I saw, what I might have simply imagined, for all I knew. Not once we found the answer to the Breach and everything sped up so quickly. It was an experiment, not even a conventional Drift,' he murmured as if talking himself out of something foolish. 'I told myself it might not work the same way.'

'But it _did_ work, Hermann,' Newt assured him. 'You've been in my head and I've been in yours and if we're going to keep being idiots about this then you might as well catch that flight to London after all.'

'There is no plane to London,' Hermann sighed, fighting a bit against the rising winds off the waterfront. 'Yesterday,' he stumbled, shaking his head. 'You deserve an explanation, only I didn't – I just thought -'

Newt turned suddenly to face him, straddling the concrete wall and whatever Hermann had been about to say was lost to a sudden icy gust. 'I know exactly what you thought, Hermann, and you were wrong,' he asserted fiercely. 'I know that's a phrase you don't hear very often, so you had better goddamn listen to me and let it sink in. You know I'm right about this,' Newt said, poking Hermann in the chest with one finger, 'and you're the one who's wrong, you're dead wrong, and I swear to god if you try to run away from me this time you're going to end up walking the plank.' Newt stopped as if he'd suddenly smacked into a door, breathing hard and looking slightly disoriented.

Hermann glanced down over the wall at the crashing spray. 'I don't particularly fancy a swim,' he answered, reaching out and grabbing a handful of Newt's shirt in his fist. Newt let Hermann pull him forward and thought the entire base could probably hear his heart pounding in his chest.

'Good,' Newt answered, still catching his breath. 'Because I really don't want to have to fish you out.' He looked up at Hermann determinedly. 'So, not booking a one way ticket across the globe?' he asked, because his stubborn mouth wouldn't let him ask for the real answer he needed.

'Not. Going. Anywhere,' Hermann answered steadily, and Newt pushed him back against the tower with one hand, cupping his face in the other. The look in Hermann's eyes was as close to an enthusiastic 'yes' as Newton was likely to get, and he wasn't about to miss his chance this time. When Newt kissed him, it was soft and almost too light, still more hesitant than either of them would have liked. He opened his mouth, licking at the traces of salt left by the ocean breeze and Hermann made the most amazing sound in the back of his throat. Newt couldn't keep still, running his hands across Hermann's chest, down his cheek, stroking his thumb over Hermann's bottom lip.

Hermann wrapped his arm around Newton's neck and reeled him in, kissing back with a bold new confidence. Newt's tongue worked its way into Hermann's mouth, and the connection sparked like a live wire. The Drift might be mostly gone, but Newt could still read Hermann like a book and he tugged on his hair, tilting his head back to trail kisses down his neck. He tasted sweat and the sea and something undefinable, something Newt wanted to learn like an entirely new language. He felt the dark, undefined ocean rise up around him, enfolding him in quiet whispers and it occurred to Newton that his dreams might have changed simply because he wasn't dreaming alone.

He heard soft footsteps on the walkway below, muffled as if from another room and didn't bother to look down, hearing a side door closing shut as quietly as possible. Newt imagined a slight smile on Mako's face as she made her way through the Shatterdome, probably on her way to tell Raleigh she'd been right after all. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except Hermann's tongue exploring his mouth in return, the way his skin felt slippery beneath Newt's fingers, and how very much he wanted to get him off this damn wall and out of all that oversized plaid and argyle making up his standard Dean of the College wardrobe. One of these days, Newton thought lazily, he was definitely buying Hermann some clothes that fit. He'd glimpsed the man once with his shirt unbuttoned, his belt hanging over a chair, and hadn't been able to get the image out of his head for _weeks_. Kissing his jaw, his cheek, the sensitive point beneath his ear, all Newton could think about as Hermann groaned and pushed back against him was pressing him down onto his sheets and not stopping until he'd explored every inch of skin with his tongue.

'Newton,' Hermann gasped out against his ear, and Newt's hands were in his hair, on the back of his neck, dipping below his collar to stroke every bare patch of skin he could find. A bank of clouds had moved in over the water while they were too wrapped up in one another to notice, blotting out most of the sun's warming rays and completely spoiling Newt's earlier prediction – not that he minded. A stroke of lightning lit up the sky, followed almost immediately by the rolling crash of thunder, and he grinned.

'Whatd'ya say we get out of here?' Newton breathed against Hermann's lips, kissing him hard and fast before he could answer.

'I think,' Hermann answered when he could find the air to manage it. 'That would be a smashing idea.' Newt pulled back and gave him his best cocky grin, grabbing Hermann's cane and sliding down the ladder. He held it steady at the base as Hermann climbed back down and took the cane from his hand. A light rain had begun to fall, making the concrete slick with beads of oil and dust. Newton held onto his arm as they hurried across it, making for the closest doorway.

'So,' Newton asked with a sly wink once they'd shut the outer door behind them, another clap of thunder echoing through the walls. 'Your place or mine?'

Hermann lifted up his cane and spun it about with a smirk. 'There are certain advantages to this thing, you know,' he said, his eyes lighting up with a decidedly wicked gleam and Newton was very, very glad that Hermann wasn't still inside his head to see just how quickly and how far down into the gutter his mind ran off with _that_ line of thinking. Hermann paused, all the same, his smile veering toward predatory. He leaned in close and whispered, 'I only meant that I have a larger bed,' but Newt would swear on the K-Science badge that he heard ' _...though I'll keep that in mind_ ,' echo quietly in the empty corridor.

'Sounds promising,' Newt agreed, not caring if his face was red or his lips were chapped or who might see them dragging one another down the hallway like teenagers leaving a dance for the car park. He took a few steps ahead and punched the 'down' button on the elevator with his entire fist, holding the door open for Hermann like the gentleman he certainly wasn't.

'Yours it is, then,' Newt said, making a sweeping bow as Hermann scoffed and swatted his outstretched hand away, pulling him inside just as the creaking metal doors began to shut. Newton took it as his cue to push Hermann back against the wall and move in for another kiss, dragging his teeth along Hermann's lower lip just to see what sort of sound it might provoke. He wasn't disappointed. Oh yeah, Newton thought, pulling Hermann's tucked shirt out from his pants and sliding his cold hands along flushed skin. He _always_ preferred a storm.    

 


End file.
